Read More]]>Guest blog from Seb Fitzjohn – EMEA Director, Global System Integrators and System Outsourcers at VMware. Follow him on Twitter at @sfitz100 for more updates.

Digital fluent partners, friends and evangelists… Thousands of industry-leading VMware partners and customers will be joining us for four days of innovation in Barcelona on 11-14 September for VMworld 2017 Europe. We would love you to join us and many of our partners from our Systems Integrator and Systems Outsourcer (SISO) programme.

IBM Cloud and Pivotal are prime examples of how VMware can work collaboratively to develop solutions that enable successful digital transformations across the globe, and we look forward to welcoming them and all our partners to Barcelona – kicking off with Partner Exchange on Monday 14th September.

VMworld 2017 Europe is set to be our biggest and best yet and will provide a chance to hear about our latest innovations in cloud infrastructure and digital workspace technology. Every year we not only reflect on how valued and integral our global SISO partners are in making innovation happen, but also look forward to the year ahead and talk through our vision for future collaborative products and solutions.

For a full breakdown of keynotes and sessions, don’t forget to check out the VMworld 2017 Europe content catalog. But what opportunities are on offer at VMworld 2017 Europe specifically for SISO partners who want to communicate our latest innovations to their customers, and also those wanting to learn more about VMware’s successful partnerships with SISOs?

Global SISO VP David Parsons will highlight recent accomplishments and best practices of SISO partners using VMware technology as a growth enabler, and provide updates on SISO GTM and enablement programs, including news about VMware partnerships with AWS, IBM Cloud and Pivotal. VMware CTO, Global Field and Industry, Chris Wolf, will also outline technology investments and market changes creating new opportunities for our SISO partners in the years ahead.

With VMware, partners are uniquely positioned to deliver a common platform to manage multiple clouds and provide customers with freedom and control. Hear from industry experts on how you can navigate the multi-cloud world with ease.

We will also be hosting a private session with Joe Baguley (VP, Chief Technology Officer – EMEA) for our SISO partner technical leaders to have an open discussion about our announcements. It’s a great opportunity to deep-dive into these announcements, so our SISO partners can leave VMworld with a deeper understanding of how we can collaboratively help our customers.

Technical roundtable sessions with our product managers will also be running throughout the even, giving you the opportunity to have SISO-specific discussions with our experts.

I look forward to hopefully seeing you all at VMworld 2017 Europe!

Register here for VMworld 2017 Europe. Note that some sessions in this blog are for partners who purchased the Partner Exchange : VMworld 2017 pass.

Read More]]>Every organisation wants to use technologies that show a demonstratable business outcome, and employee productivity is one of the key attributes they want to improve upon.

Achieving this requires a business to offer better end-user experiences, become more flexible in regards to working habits, and open up access of corporate systems to new devices.

VMware has been helping companies to achieve these goals by focusing on empowering the digital workspace with its Workspace ONE platform. This includes using VMware Horizon to provide the necessary infrastructure to securely deliver the apps and data employees need, accessible on any device, and VMware AirWatch to manage their apps and devices.

Lufthansa Cargo is one such business: it has managed to cut costs, increase efficiency and better manage applications as a result of VMware AirWatch.

The international cargo company has been striving for paperless operations, and is relying on strong mobile support to get there.

Sven Gartz, captain and electronic flight bag (EFB) administrator at Lufthansa Cargo, explained that switching from a desktop-based device to a mobile EFB brought two main advantages.

“The first was weight reduction; mobile devices enabled us to remove extensive built-in elements from the cockpit. This generated a five-figure sum of fuel efficiency per year,” he said.

“The second was that the mobile devices enabled us to quickly provide employees with updates, new apps and new approaches which saved the company money because there is a cost for every minute a pilot is on duty,” he added.

Using standardised tablets enabled the company to reduce its time-consuming approval cycles, while contracts with standardised product manufacturers trimmed down Lufthansa Cargo’s operating costs significantly.

The cargo company also used the AirWatch compliance engine to ensure that its mobile devices can stop applications from interfering with each other, as the company needs to make sure air traffic is operational and that applications don’t cause EFB outages.

No workplace is the same – and while organisations are attempting to produce modernised workplaces, they all have different requirements in order to get there.

For example, Koningin Elisabeth Institute (KEI), a rehabilitation hospital in Belgium, experienced downtime regularly. But as its reliance on technology grew, any downtime had an increasingly negative impact on the organisation.

Stefaan Dewulf, head of the organisation’s IT department, explained that its 150 devices were running on different operating system versions and that updates had to be done manually, device by device – a time-consuming process.

“We decided on VMware Horizon, a VDI solution. There is nothing on the local client anymore, everything is in the data center. A doctor taps their card into the device and gets a connection into the PC and the data center and can access the patient data they need,” he said.

But no solution is complete without thinking about security – and after seeing NSX at VMworld, Dewulf was convinced NSX was the best solution for the hospital to secure its data center.

Dewulf said: “Everything is more secure and faster than before so log on times have reduced,”.

Dewulf added that there were three key technology advantages of the VMware technology: “It’s very powerful, it’s easy to manage and it’s ready for the future,” he said.

It’s a great example that demonstrates how traditional ways of managing, securing and supporting users, apps, devices and data may no longer meet the needs of businesses. Businesses need to think out of the box to empower their digital workspace. Both Lufthansa Cargo and KEI are doing just that, and they’re reaping the rewards.

To learn more about how we have helped our customers adopt a Cross-Cloud approach read our blog here .

]]>http://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/how-digital-workspaces-are-empowering-employees/feed/0Getting up to speed with Micro-Segmentationhttp://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/micro-segmentation/
http://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/micro-segmentation/#respondTue, 01 Aug 2017 11:00:10 +0000http://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/?p=4818High-profile cyber attacks are frequently in the news these days, …

Read More]]>High-profile cyber attacks are frequently in the news these days, putting IT security at the forefront of everyone’s minds. The WannaCry and Petya ransomware assaults, in particular, hit major businesses across the world in nations as diverse as the US, Russia, India, Taiwan and Britain.

The message is clear. In order to survive the next security threat, you’re going to need to approach security in a completely new way.

Many businesses discovered their perimeter network security no longer gives them adequate protection. In fact, VMware’s Garry Owen says, in this video, that perimeter security “is no longer fit for purpose”.

What we need is to secure the inside of the network, as well as the edge of it, argues Garry in What have we learned from WannaCry? How to future-proof your IT security.

One way to do this is by bringing security up to date, which you can do with virtualization. See the video, and the Dummies Guides below, to discover how VMware can help you to make sure your security stays strong going forward.

This new networking approach means if an attacker breaks in through the outside door, their movements are limited to the ‘room’ they’re in. It’s a completely new way of doing network security, Garry says: a way to future-proof your IT security.

Micro-segmentation – get up to speed

To find out all about micro-segmentation and Zero Trust security, download this free, must-have resource from VMware: Micro-segmentation For Dummies – and get the jump on the next WannaCry wannabe.

Network virtualization – rethink networking

And for a comprehensive and free guide to network virtualization in six chapters, get VMware’s Network Virtualization For Dummies . Make your network move as fast as your business!

Read More]]>Laurent Allard, Vice-Chairman at OVH, talks about the company’s partnership with VMware and how being one of our key cloud providers is helping it build dedicated solutions tailored to meet industry compliance and regulations, such as OVH Healthcare.

Customers are living in a multi-cloud world; they’re relying on different types of cloud technologies, as well as their own dedicated servers to ensure they adapt to the growing demands of their business.

Our agenda is very much client driven. We adapt our solution development to the reactions we get from customers. Each customer has a different profile and they all have different starting points on their journeys to the cloud, or what they want to achieve in their business.

How to set us apart from rivals in the cloud space? Well, we have a clear strategic view that ‘one size fits all’ for cloud just doesn’t work. We need hosted, private and public clouds. After all, you can’t paint a painting with a single colour. Our view is to be a cloud service provider for all companies, across industries and of all sizes. We don’t need to be a specialist in a vertical market – we are industry agnostic – but we are fully aligned, knowledgeable and skilled in industry trends and compliance. We adapt to make our services right for a customer. That’s what our expertise is – and it’s leveraged with our partnership with VMware.

We have a joint alignment with VMware, sharing common interests and goals through an outstanding relationship. VMware has been a key driver in us becoming a successful global provider of private cloud solutions since 2010 – and we continue to work with them as a trusted cloud service provider partner.

It’s such a close partnership that, the same day VMware announces a new solution, we’re ready to support it. And it works both ways. We listen to our customers’ needs; they want to benefit from VMware’s stack without needing the expertise in-house to exploit it. They’re looking for a very dynamic type of provisioning with almost the same attributes as the public cloud – but from a dedicated, private-hosted VMware environment. They want the security, scalability and agility of a VMware solution but don’t want to focus on the technology – they want to focus on growing their business.

It’s in industrialising our innovative solutions that our partnership with VMware continues to prosper, so we’ve started to find ways in which we can help customers with sector-specific solutions. When you grow by 30% year on year, you can’t stay with the same long-term vision to stay up to date. You need to innovate, to be agile, and be able to react swiftly and stay ahead. And that is possible through VMware.

One of our biggest success stories in that field has been with OVH Healthcare. With OVH Healthcare, we host the information systems of healthcare organisations in an environment that meets even the most demanding industry regulations and compliance laws. We then provide an expert team of data hosting and medical specialists to help the organisation choose the private cloud environment best befitting of their needs. As ever, OVH has worked alongside VMware to create the different environments, but all are based on vCenter, vSphere, NSX and vRealize Operations. Customers can create their VMs from the vSphere interface and can configure access rules to their networks through NSX while using vRealize Operations to control and manage their infrastructure.

We actually developed the solution in line with French start-up Betterise Health Tech. The company was looking for a solution to support its mobile applications for diabetic patients, but when it wanted to extend its product range, offering mobile apps for diabetic patients, for example, it was faced with a legal constraint – it needed a licensed HDS host. It wanted to make use of our private cloud with VMware, so we designed OVH Healthcare and obtained HDS accreditation in November 2016. As French regulations are among the most protective of personal data, they often serve as a model in Europe. This shows just how secure our solution with VMware must be.

This is just one example. We’re looking forward to continuing on our journey with VMware to help support other organisations achieve the flexibility of the cloud with solutions dedicated to meeting the specific requirements of their sectors.

For us, that includes, but isn’t limited to: helping clients to invest in cloud services without worrying about being locked-in, managing sovereignty needs, scaling within private cloud, and managing the mix between legacy and new cloud services. If we can do all that for them, they can focus on innovating and driving the business forward; safe in the knowledge we’re providing the foundation to make it happen.

This blog is part of a broader series we’re running over the next couple of weeks, with our vCAN partners discussing their work supporting European businesses as they benefit from a cloud environment best suited to their needs.

Helping businesses become more agile and digitally transformed is at the very heart of what we do. And from ensuring business continuity with vSAN 6.6 to navigating the multi-cloud world with our Cross-Cloud architecture, our partners are there with us every step of the way. We therefore relish the chance to celebrate our shared success.

To reflect upon the great work that has been achieved across our partner community, we were very proud to host our seventh annual Partner Recognition Dinner. And, drum roll please, here are the winners!

VMware Specialist Partner of the Year – R-com

IT solutions and education expert, R-com, has been awarded Specialist Partner of the Year for heavily investing in training to develop new leads and opportunities in mobility. It’s created customer-focused marketing campaigns that have identified new leads and opportunities and has achieved an impressive 550% growth year on year for Enterprise Mobility Management business.

VMware Public Sector Partner of the Year – SBL

SBL’s willingness to adapt and upskill won the consultancy Public Sector Partner of the Year award. The consultancy has helped us to drive momentum for flagship products such as NSX and vSAN, securing sizable wins, landing SLAs and influencing longstanding customers.

VMware Customer Story of the Year – Softcat

Softcat’s understanding of customer needs and enterprise mobility management led to it receiving VMware’s Customer Story of the Year award. Winning over legacy customers and demonstrating the benefits of EUC was a highlight for Softcat as it significantly grew a pilot project, integrated Workspace ONE and developed a larger-scale project for the customer that’s now entering its second phase.

VMware System Integrator of the year – IBM UK

A strong strategic partnership made IBM the natural choice for VMware’s System Integrator of the Year award. A shared vision for cloud and close collaboration helped to secure VMware’s involvement in cloud sales and opportunities with net new accounts. Further engagement with other flagship products, from NSX and vSAN to the vRealize Suite sealed the deal for IBM’s partner recognition win.

VMware Marketing Campaign of the Year – Computacenter

VMware Marketing Campaign of the Year award was won by Computacenter for its dedicated VMworld Europe 2016 marketing plans and execution. At the event, the company hosted over 40 customers, setting up key stakeholder meetings and workshops. To close the event, a hugely successful evening reception was attended by over 180 VMware executives, partner sales and customers to drive engagement for both companies.

Ensono’s dedication to the VMware portfolio resulted in a well-deserved VMware vCAN Partner of the Year award win. Ensono’s engagement with hybrid cloud and integration of VMware’s SDDC suite and NSX into its own cloud offering resulted in two major international customer deals and impressive mutual growth.

VMware ‘IT Strategy’ Partner of the Year – Phoenix Software

Strong public sector customer wins and dedication to the Modernize Data Centers strategy resulted in a VMware IT Strategy Partner of the Year win for Phoenix Software. Phoenix was particularly strong in demonstrating the customer benefits of SDDC, from migration costs to reduced risk and cost across NSX, vSAN and vRealize.

VMware Rising Star of the Year – Creative ITC

Creative ICT’s focus on consultancy, dedication to EUC and impressive sales brought in the VMware Rising Star of the Year win. Two thirds of the company’s revenue was attributed to EUC and license revenue snowballed to deliver an astounding growth 833% across vCloud Air, Enterprise Desktop vRealize, vSAN and NSX in 2016.

VMware UK&I Partner of the Year – Asystec

Our highest accolade of the evening was awarded to Asystec for its dedication to VMware’s product portfolio, marketing campaigns and flagship events, and for aiming to work as an extension of the VMware team. The company has achieved an impressive 210% annual growth and one integrated marketing campaign alone on ‘Act 2’ technologies led to an impressive $1m pipeline.

Thank you to all our partners who contributed to a successful year and a celebratory evening of shared success. See you at the Partner Recognition Dinner in 2017!

To find out more about the partner opportunity for 2017 and beyond, hear what VMware’s Vice President for Channel, Alliances and General Business in EMEA has to say here.

Read More]]>At VMware, we’ve always been intent on giving our customers as many options and as much flexibility as possible when it comes to their IT environment.

Our latest commitment to that cause, is delivering VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure, helping our customers to bring VMware virtual desktops and applications to the increasing global presence of Microsoft Azure in the enterprise, which is now available in 38 regions globally.

Bringing together one of the fastest growing Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers with the industry’s leading app and desktop cloud services offering gives our customers several infrastructure options with the flexibility to move between different platforms – all part of our cross-cloud strategy.

But what does this all mean?

Well, customers can now connect Azure IaaS to Horizon Cloud to deliver and manage Horizon virtual desktops and applications. This is ideal for organisations with an Azure subscription, but also for customers that want the flexibility to switch their deployment options from other public cloud services if use cases change, employees move or economics shift – thanks to Horizon Cloud’s ability to use a single cloud control plane. The VMware and Microsoft integration can also help our customers accelerate their move to Windows 10.

As ever, our solutions provide customers with options. In fact, only Horizon Cloud offers this flexible scale-out of virtual desktops and applications. For example, it can offer fully managed public cloud infrastructure for those companies looking to outsource management of infrastructure to the cloud for a desktop-as-a-service experience, or it can offer bring your own on-premises infrastructure with Hyper-converged Infrastructure appliances for those organisations that want greater control over their virtual desktop infrastructure – particularly those with tight security or performance requirements.

VMware continues to innovate and cater for all of our customers’ needs.

VMware partners – its nearly that time again! Partner Exchange (PEX) returns to VMworld 2017 Europe on the Monday, 11th September. In our usual home at the Fira in Barcelona, we’ll be offering our partners the content, tools and industry-leading knowledge they need to sell VMware products and solutions.

Bigger and better than ever, this year’s PEX will also see us running a series of value-added boot camps and enablement sessions on Sunday 10th September, all designed to educate and inspire sales teams and technical audiences from across our partner community.

Come join us! Partner Exchange really is a fantastic opportunity for you to collaborate and network with peers, explore conversations around digital transformation, and immerse yourself in the latest in cloud infrastructure and digital workspace innovations. In addition, you can also connect with over 10,000 customers attending VMworld 2017 Europe from 11-14 September.

We look forward to welcoming you to Partner Exchange at VMworld 2017 Europe. Register here today.

]]>http://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/kick-start-your-vmworld-2017-europe-with-partner-exchange/feed/0Modernising the data center is the way towards digital and DevOpshttp://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/modernising-the-data-center-is-the-way-towards-digital-and-devops/
http://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/modernising-the-data-center-is-the-way-towards-digital-and-devops/#respondFri, 21 Jul 2017 08:26:04 +0000http://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/?p=4797Business and IT leaders agree that data center and cloud …

Read More]]>Business and IT leaders agree that data center and cloud transformation will yield big benefits, ranging from greater business agility and responsiveness to change, greater cost efficiencies and faster time to innovation for new applications.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean scrapping everything that already exists within the business and starting from scratch. Instead, businesses can bring their IT environment up-to-date by modernising the infrastructure, automating IT and running modern apps.

Data center modernisation is at the heart of this movement to change.

For some businesses it could mean a move to DevOps, for others it could be a shift to transforming into a digital business. Many are striving for both. Either way, data center modernisation can lead to a significant boost in speed and agility – two key attributes at the heart of DevOps and digital transformation.

Take Amdocs, a market leader in customer experience software and services. The company had a challenge to provision an environment for developers and testers to work quickly without depending on IT.

“Previously, it took us between three hours to three days to provision an environment, which is market standard. It wasn’t enough for us,” said Golan Remi, Head of Global Business Technologies at Amdocs IT.

“We needed to transform our code from development through testing for the customer in record time, so we conducted a POC with multiple private cloud vendors. The VMware solutions proved to be the closest to our requirements and the easiest to install and operate,” he explained.

The organisation deployed a large-scale private cloud based on VMware’s software-defined data center (SDDC) architecture. It allowed Amdocs to provision thousands of vApps on a daily basis as part of Amdocs’ automated DevOps processes.

Previously it took the organisation between three days to a few weeks to create a full environment for its developers – but this has all changed.

“Now, a developer can come to work, press a button, go and make a coffee and when they come back the environment is ready for them,” Remi said.

The company is able to globally provision an environment to all of its developers and testers with zero dependency on IT, while also significantly shortening its ramp up time and being more flexible to its customers’ needs.

Another example of a company that has been implementing a DevOps philosophy is Telefonica, the huge digital telco with more than 300 million users in 21 countries across the world.

Its Senior DevOps Manager, Gustavo Martin Bouso, said that the company took the decision to refresh its hardware and storage using the hyper-converged system.

“The benefits including a reduction in cost, a reduction in complexity and having a scalable system. VMware is helping us with digital transformation,” he said.

It’s clear with these examples that with SDDC technologies, customers can modernise data centers for infrastructure flexibility, security, and scalability.

To go a step further, organisations can leverage VMware Cross-Cloud Architecture, easily extending this to public clouds, giving their developers an integrated hybrid cloud environment for deploying modern apps.

This is all part of their journey towards a DevOps culture and a digital future.

To learn more about how we have helped our customers adopt a Cross-Cloud approach read our blog here .

]]>http://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/modernising-the-data-center-is-the-way-towards-digital-and-devops/feed/0A Cross-Cloud approach is driving business innovation and agilityhttp://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/a-cross-cloud-approach-is-driving-business-innovation-and-agility/
http://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/a-cross-cloud-approach-is-driving-business-innovation-and-agility/#respondFri, 21 Jul 2017 08:18:20 +0000http://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/?p=4794Organisations are constantly looking for greater business agility and a …

Read More]]>Organisations are constantly looking for greater business agility and a faster time to innovation for new applications – all while managing cost efficiency.

To do this, even the most successful businesses have to rely on new ways of integrating their technologies with other reliable and resilient partners that can take their capabilities up to a new level.

Take two of our very own customers – CINIA Group, a successful IT services company that focuses on network, cloud and software, and Proact, Europe’s leading independent integrator for data center and cloud solutions. Both companies are incredibly successful at what they do – but instead of standing still, they have looked to provide new services and increase their existing capabilities.

CINIA Group, wanted to build a new Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) for customers requiring critical infrastructure and availability on its Lioncloud.

It is based on VMware vCloud Availability for vCloud Director, with the support of partner Fluentscale.

Kristian Nieminen, Director of Cloud Services at CINIA Group said that the company built this new DRaaS on VMware technology because “it was the best of both worlds.”

“It’s a platform for modern cloud native workloads, and also performs as a robust and scalable platform for legacy systems,” he explained, adding that vCloud Availability for vCloud Director was selected as one of the core elements due to its easy integration to the existing Lioncloud infrastructure.

This is exactly what VMware Cross Cloud Architecture provides – an integrated architecture that supports customers’ cloud strategies with freedom and control.

Nieminen added that this is backed with one of the best price-to-performance ratios – meaning that it is cost efficient too.

“vCloud Director proved to be versatile and easy-to-use technology. By using it, we have managed to build a cost-effective, powerful and very secure platform which is always available,” he said.

Like CINIA Group, Proact has been a VMware customer for a number of years. It has based all of its 22 datacentres on the VMware cloud management platform, giving customers who are at different stages of their journey to the cloud a number of options.

“Customers are all at different stages, both investment and technology wise, but with a hybrid cloud and VMware software-defined datacentre solution, they can select what kind of services they want to move to the cloud now, and leave the rest behind and slowly develop these into a full-cloud solution if they want to,” Proact’s Managing Director, Carsen Egeberg, explained.

He said that the biggest benefit of the Proact Cloud on VMware products is the time-to-market.

“This isn’t just time-to-market from an IT perspective but from a business perspective. [It helps with] entering new markets, cutting down costs – all the development any company in the world needs to stay above the water,” he said.

Proact’s hybrid cloud enables customers to stop thinking in physical layers and start thinking about services required for the company. It also gives them the opportunity to move services around freely between a local private cloud, a Proact hybrid cloud in one of its data centres, all the way out to the public cloud.

Our work with CINIA Group and Proact shows how we can help enterprises to confidently integrate public clouds to scale and extend their businesses, delivering agility, capacity, and resilience, and also accelerating innovation.

To learn more about how we have helped our customers modernise their data centers read our blog here.

]]>http://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/a-cross-cloud-approach-is-driving-business-innovation-and-agility/feed/0Why take 63 steps when you can take one?http://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/why-take-63-steps-when-you-can-take-one/
http://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/why-take-63-steps-when-you-can-take-one/#respondFri, 14 Jul 2017 16:04:25 +0000http://vmwareemeablog.com/uk/?p=4790In the latest blog from our series of conversations with …

Read More]]>In the latest blog from our series of conversations with partners, Ole Væhrens, Director Sales and Professional Services at Enterprise Business Partner, Proact, talks about network virtualization as a key factor in any agile, multi-cloud strategy

Cross-industry, businesses just want to work smarter, be agile and be more competitive. They don’t care about cloud – or getting into deep conversations about the cloud approach that will work best for them. That’s why, at Proact, we adopt a business cloud alignment approach. IT needs to weave in with the business and its goals, so that’s where our conversations with customers starts. Then we can take these business objectives and map the right cloud environment accordingly.

But what are the most common issues we’re seeing? Well, we’re still seeing that IT and the business are working at different paces – and that’s the real issue for needing the cloud – helping IT keep up. Take one of our customers as an example. A large Danish bank, it wanted to be more agile and use a mixture of cloud environments via our data centres, but were slowed down by the constant need to standardize using document workflows. Its IT team would have to go through 63 manual steps – checking against security and compliance policy – before it could configure each workload. Can you imagine how time-consuming those steps were? And what the business could have achieved in that time, rather than waiting for something to help them get on with their jobs? Finally, manual processes do not ensure the same high consistency as an automated process – simply because of the human factor.

So that’s where we come in. As part of VMware’s cloud partner network, we help organisations skip these steps and be as agile as possible using VMware’s Cross-Cloud architecture. The multi-cloud approach means our customers can run numerous applications and environments on-premises, off-premises or with a mixture of both as a hybrid cloud, and on different clouds, including AWS and Azure – whatever best fits the needs of their business.

But, the aspect that’s going to make or break this agile, multi-cloud approach is security. As the bank in Denmark, and a number of our other customers have found, true agility can be restricted if it isn’t underpinned by some form of standardization. And that, for me, is where VMware’s network virtualization solution, NSX, is one of the most critical weapons in VMware’s arsenal. It enables networking and security services to be automated and standardised – across clouds.

What does that mean? Well, for IT teams, new infrastructure can be spun up quickly while still safe in the knowledge that all security and compliance standards are met. For the rest of the business, additional resource can be spun up in the most relevant cloud environment at a time that best suits them, so they can develop new services even quicker. For customers, it means they can get other departments in the business up and running on new projects and products far quicker which, let’s face it, means faster time to market on any new propositions. For the Danish bank, that means new resource can be spun up in half an hour, rather than days, ensuring it’s always first to market with new customer propositions.

We’re working closely with VMware to integrate Cross-Cloud into the services we offer our customers – after all, it’s the best way to guarantee agility without compromising on security.

Want to know more about our cloud partners and working with VMware to get true multi-cloud agility? Keep an eye on this blog for more posts from our partners and our cloud partner leadership team to see how.